Sunday, May 18, 2008

Migranes and Musings on Obama: Hallow Man

Obamarama has come full circle as Barack's own private chickens are now coming home to roost: Alice Palmer is campaigning for Hillary Clinton in Indiana. Remember Alice Palmer? She was Barack's political mentor before he kicked her to the curb in '95, and then took her seat in the Illinois state senate, not by making his case to the voters, but by using tried-and-true hardball political tactics to knock her--and all his other rivals--off the ballot.

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Barack Obama has built his appeal on the claim that he's different from the usual political player. How ironic, then, as recent events have shown, that he may be the biggest player of the them all. All of his campaign's problems have been there from the beginning. There have been no surprises. But to deal with them before his campaign got off the ground was to admit to the duplicity that has made Barack all things to all people. He played Alice Palmer to gain entry into Southside Chicago political circles, and for her blessing. He played Jeremiah Wright and Trinity church to establish bourgeois nationalist street cred. He played Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn for their white liberal, lapsed '60's radical, Hyde Park intellectual bona fides. By insisting that his faith was central to his politics he played his white, Christian supporters, for whom he figured one church would be as good as another.

He waltzed with all of them but had no intention of taking any of them down the aisle.